


Vendetta

by Cryptographic_Delurk



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Class Differences, Dragon Age: Origins Quest - A Paragon of Her Kind, F/M, Gen, Infidelity, Keeping Up With the Aeducans, Minor Aeducan/Zevran, Satire, This is Not the Dwarf Noble We Need or Deserve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:33:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27498754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cryptographic_Delurk/pseuds/Cryptographic_Delurk
Summary: Gorim Saelac and Princess Aeducan might not be the same people they were half a year ago, but that doesn’t mean she can’t still grab him by the balls and drag him into one last hurrah against the Diamond Quarter.
Relationships: Female Aeducan/Gorim Saelac
Comments: 7
Kudos: 6
Collections: 2020 A Paragon of Their Kind Dragon Age Dwarf Exchange





	Vendetta

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kaijuburgers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaijuburgers/gifts).



> Hi! I took some inspiration from several of your prompts, so this ended up a mash-up that I’m not sure managed to be in the spirit of any one of them in specific. I can only hope that it’s not too thinly spread, and that you’re looking forward to an angsty, dumb Paragon of Her Kind rewrite with bonus Gorim.
> 
> Read & Relax.

When Lady Aeducan was very small, and Gorim Saelac not much bigger, she had broken something, the way children do.

She had been used to things of iron and stone – too heavy and sturdy to break – not the delicate and careful craft that had gone into the music box. It was of foreign make, Orlesian or Ander or something like that, passed down from topside through some improbable string of trade until someone jumped-up member of the merchant class presented it as a gift to King Endrin and his children. And his middle child fumbled and broke it.

This was from before the time of intricate bribes and schemes and the planting of false evidence. So what Lady Aeducan did was simple. She lied and said Trian had done it. And when Trian had protested, and her father questioned, she had lied again and again.

In the end, her father believed her. Trian was scolded. And, in watching the way she was rewarded for her duplicity, Lady Aeducan made an expression that Gorim had never quite forgotten. The ever so slight downward turn of her full lips, eyes clouded with understated confusion – like things had gone terribly wrong, and she wasn’t quite sure how or why, much less how she might manipulate it better.

She wore the same expression standing over Trian. She had, Gorim suspected, intended to let him drag her through a thoroughly embarrassing investigation and trial. One that would no doubt make him seem a raving, paranoid lunatic, and further erode him in the eyes of the Assembly. Gorim expected Lady Aeducan to turn and strike their scout down for having escalated the situation to violence. But she just stood there. Maybe that was the horror of having your brother’s blood on your hands.

Trian had not had enough stone in him. In a way, his neck was as fragile as a music box.

Lady Aeducan wore that expression once again, as Gorim relayed to her what had happened to him since he’d come to the surface. A bad slip against the ice in the Frostbacks had left his leg broken. And perhaps he would have died, with no money and no way to civilisation, if he hadn’t been picked up by the family of his then-future wife. Lady Aeducan’s lip curled.

In a way, their old love affair had been as fragile as Trian’s neck.

Gorim hoped Lady Aeducan wouldn’t mention it. He hoped she had moved on. He hoped she wouldn’t ask him to come with her. He hoped he wouldn’t back her in a corner and force him to say all of it.

_The Gorim you knew was a fool. I like who I am with my wife better. I like that I don’t simper after her. I like that I’m not made to chase off rabble for her, or relay her messages to those beneath her. I like that I don’t mindlessly repeat scorn for the casteless, or surface dwarves. She makes me feel good and honest. I like that the more I talk to her, the more she opens up to me, the more I discover the wonderful, little intricacies that make her who she is. The more I talk to you the more closed off you are, the less I understand, the more confused I get. I understand you best when neither of us says a word._

Gorim hoped he wouldn’t have to say any of that, but he expected a couple of bitter quips at least. For Lady Aeducan to point out that he had married in the space of a few months, even if she let the rest slide.

Instead she smiled, and it only looked a little bit forced.

“When can I meet the lucky girl?”

Gorim breathed a sigh of relief. “I would love to introduce you!” he announced. “But you must have more important business than hearing about me.”

“Nonsense,” Lady Aeducan waved him off. But she let him show her his father-in-law’s wares and distracted him with talk of the various gangs she’d run into in the city. It seemed like she intended to navigate this situation as respectably and gracefully as possible. And Gorim owed her a lot – had always owed the Aeducans a lot. She’d been such a big part of his life, and he cared deeply for her now as always, and so he’d been happy to extend the invitation for supper later that night.

This New Gorim could be earnest and trusting. Gorim liked his New Self better.

But the Old Gorim would have known better.

Lady Aeducan was, above all, very charming. This had been abundantly clear when she was the darling of the Diamond Quarter. It was abundantly clear now as she charmed the socks off his wife and father-in-law. She had brought with her a sizeable cask of fine Dwarven Ale. The room was warm. Good spirits were flowing. Lady Aeducan asked after the business, with plenty of flattering comments about his father-in-law’s smithing work. She asked after his wife’s health through the early stages of her pregnancy. She spoke professionally yet amiably of Gorim’s achievements as a warrior, and his loyalty and honour as her second. His wife and father-in-law both seemed close to bursting with pride.

And so they were already half convinced when Lady Aeducan dropped a couple hundred sovereigns on the table and announced her intention of hiring him out for a few months. She had a job for him. One last hurrah in Orzammar.

There were protests, of course, but Lady Aeducan already had the words to soothe them all.

“Don’t worry, I’ll have him back in time for the birth.

“We have a wonderful healer on staff. From the Circle of Magi, you know. Very experienced, and gentle. She might be able to do something for his leg that nobody else had thought of.

“In any case, I doubt it will be very dangerous. I’m hiring him for his consult and expertise as a former member of House Saelac. It will probably be less painful than watching him fumble his sales pitches in the Market District.”

His father-in-law had let that criticism seep through the conversation earlier, and now he and Lady Aeducan shared a laugh about it.

His wife pursed her lips, and Gorim could see her working it out in her head. Gorim stood and Lady Aeducan allowed it when he rested an arm on his wife’s shoulder and pulled her aside.

“It is a lot of money,” his wife told him, from the safety of the laundry room. She had a few wrinkling worry lines at her forehead. “I suppose we’ll need it soon. We’ll soon have an extra mouth to feed. Clothes and cradle and diapers.”

Gorim was surprised. “You want me to go?”

“Oh, of course I don’t!” she said, with surprising feeling.

“Melanie,” he said her name with a sigh, and she let him hold her close.

“You don’t talk about that time in your life much, but… I know this must be important to you,” she said. “You take pride and honour in your work. In everything you do. And I know you feel terrible about how things got left with Lady Aeducan. I can’t be the one standing in the way of you seeing that through.”

It was all true, if only half the truth. He knew the spirit in which Melanie said these things, and that she hadn’t meant to invoke the image of Lady Aeducan inside that cell, teary eyed and dressed in rags, lunging to bite at his lips like it might be her last taste of life. Melanie only knew the things he had told her.

But he was good and noble in her vision of him, and he wanted badly not to disillusion her.

They returned to the dinner table together, where Lady Aeducan and his father-in-law were toasting to something, clattering their tankards together. She looked at Gorim, with shiny black eyes and a smug curl of her lips, and Gorim knew he didn’t have to say a word for her to know she’d won.

==

Gorim would reflect later that the bulk of this adventure, measured in time, was travel. It took nearly a month to cross Ferelden from Denerim up into the Frostbacks. And it would take another month to cross back, when they were finished.

He spent the time familiarising himself with Lady Aeducan’s new companions. There was another Grey Warden, who made a lot of jokes and gave his Order no sense of professionalism. A fussing Chantry Sister, who tripped over herself wondering if dwarves were created in the eyes of the Maker or if they really were from the Stone. A witch who was beautiful and as haughty as any noble Gorim had ever met. A very stoic Qunari. An elf that seemed to be Lady Aeducan’s favourite target for bossing about.

And Wynne, of course.

“I suppose it is a little crooked,” she said, while examining his leg. And she seemed very gentle and wise, not mad and dangerous the way humans said mages were. “I would have to break the leg and set it again. It would not take long with magic, perhaps we’d lose a day’s worth of travel.” She looked at Gorim ponderously. “How much trouble is it giving you? Does it ache? You seem to have kept a good walking pace in my estimate. But did you used to be quicker? Resetting it would be a lot of physical trauma to put you through needlessly.”

It was possible that Gorim had exaggerated the extent of his injury.

Lady Aeducan gave him an unimpressed look. “What do you say, Gorim?” she asked, with an arched eyebrow. “Do we have to break your leg to get you to behave?”

He looked down at his lap, at the uncovered leg stretched out in Wynne’s hands.

“No, Lady Aeducan.”

She huffed. “The next time Bodahn and Sandal are by, get yourself a crossbow. Carry your sword too, but stay off the frontline if you can.”

It was as close to mercy as he had ever seen from her.

But perhaps there were parts of her he hadn’t seen. She didn’t speak to him for days after that, but he watched her conversations with the others. She was more worn, sometimes too tired to put on her façade. Every so often she spoke to them directly, as peers.

Alistair mumbled about assassins she shouldn’t have let loose.

She laid her bedroll out next to Gorim one night. “Have you ever seen a werewolf?” she asked him.

“Where would I have seen one, my lady?”

“I was in the Brecilian Forest when I saw them,” she said. “‘Were-’ means human. But some of them were elves. When they weren’t wolves.”

There was a story there. Gorim was not sure it was his place to ask it.

“I think the stars were brighter there than anywhere else I’ve seen since I came to the surface. That, or it seemed that way looking up at them, with the dark shadows of trees in the corner of my vision.”

The thought filled Gorim with nausea. Truthfully, he hated camping out like this, without a ceiling over his head. “I never could get used to that big hole in the sky.”

“Leliana says Chantry scholars once hypothesised that the sky was only a giant ceiling, with little holes whittled into it so light could peak through. Those are the stars.”

“I suppose that’s one way to feel comforted,” he said, though he had a feeling neither of them were. “It will be nice to get back underground.”

==

He dreamed of walking on that sky-ceiling. That endless black, tracing with his footsteps lines like constellations. From star point to star point of light. It was like their journey – the long and numbing walk stringing together moments of brightness, intrigue, hope, despair. And then on.

==

Lady Aeducan was something of herself by the time they climbed up to the gates of Orzammar.

There was a commotion between the guards and a collection of human soldiers, and Lady Aeducan walked right up between them. The Aeducan Family Shield on one arm, and Alistair on the other.

“Guess who’s back,” she commanded. She set the edge of the shield against the ground, and leaned over it with one lazily folded arm. Gorim could see the way the light was intended to reflect off the snow onto the shining crest of House Aeducan.

“You’re the exile,” the guard said warily. “The kinslayer. Your conviction and guilt were entered into Assembly record. I suggest you leave and not compound this tragedy.”

“Kinslayer? Oh, you’re not getting in,” the soldiers were saying.

Lady Aeducan swung Alistiar in front of her like a second shield, and kicked him in the back of the shin so he stumbled forward. Gorim could see the frown on the edge of his face, but he swallowed his dissatisfaction as he pulled a sheath of scrolls from his pack and found the correct one to present to the guard.

“I’m here on behalf of the Grey Wardens,” Lady Aeducan announced. “This treaty obliges Orzammar to aid me.”

The guard looked at it grimly. “Well, that _is_ the royal seal. Only the Assembly is authorised to address it. Warden… You may pass.”

The human soldiers appeared more riled then ever. “What?! You’re going to let her through?! She’s a traitor! The Wardens killed King Cailan and nearly doomed Ferelden! She’s the sworn enemy of King Loghain!”

Lady Aeducan gave a practised yawn. “Which one is Loghain again? You see, there are so many wannabe kings out to kill me, I can hardly keep them all straight.”

This ended in a bloody grizzly murder, and the sincere thanks of the guards for ridding their front steps of pests. Gorim wondered at their honour, so eager to be rid of their problems they would accept murder as an acceptable solutions to their problems and pass Lady Aeducan further up the line of Orzammar’s bureaucracy.

“Atrast vala, Warden,” one of them said. “You left chaos to fester in your house, but we must respect your new role.”

“Yes, my new role,” Lady Aeducan agreed, spinning her shield in her hand, so the lines that made up her family crest spun into one yellow whorl.

Wynne and the elf were dawdling through the Hall of Heroes, observing the statues of the Paragons and reading the plaques set at their feet. Alistair was still grumbling about treaties and Loghain and a slight disagreement with Lady Aeducan’s priorities. The others had stayed to camp outside with the surfacers. Which meant that it was just Gorim and Lady Aeducan that got a full view of the commotion when they walked into the Commons.

Gorim cringed as Harrowmont let himself be flung to the ground. He scurried away on his hands and knees, as Bhelen’s men pulled axes and towered over him. Bhelen stood firm and still, at the centre of his supporters.

It seemed clear, between the two of them, which cut the figure of a stronger man.

But then Lady Aeducan clapped, and Bhelen’s eyes slid to her. His rosy face went white as a sheet. Gorim couldn’t hear from this distance, but a few of his men were looking and pointing and shouting. Gorim half expected to be charged and run against the stone, but Bhelen barked out an order and they all retreated, in as brisk a walk as they could manage.

“Poor little brother,” Lady Aeducan cooed, as she walked up to the space he’d vacated. “Can’t handle a pair of ghosts.”

There was something unreadable in her face, but it was plastered over soon enough with a bright artificial smile as more familiar characters appeared. “Nerav Helmi, as I live and breathe?! Is that you?!”

==

Nerav Helmi was not the last. They were crowded and heckled more than once on the way up to the Diamond Quarter. By everyone from merchants to drunks to nug wranglers to a dwarf in Chantry robes much too long for them.

Lady Aeducan bore it with an upturned nose and regal bearing. But when a child of the Smith Caste had clasped onto Wynne’s arm and tried to drag her off, her tongue had become sharp.

“Gorim, I shouldn’t have to instruct you on how to be a good second,” Lady Aeducan hissed, as she pulled Wynne back.

The smith girl pouted. “But I-”

A new women approached, seemingly only with the intent to shout. “I don’t care if you _are_ a Grey Warden, kinslayer! Orzammar has no need for the likes of you!”

“I’m beginning to see why you didn’t want to come back here,” Alistair said conspiratorially.

Lady Aeducan spoke over him. Her face was a placid mask when she turned to Gorim.

“Gorim, why is this woman speaking to me?”

The woman sputtered and continued to curse.

But Lady Aeducan spoke more clearly than her. “She displeases me.”

“A- As you say, my lady,” Gorim heard himself answer.

The woman spit in his beard when he approached to shuffle her away. But Gorim was, in his own way, used to humiliation. And something about his calm and firm demeanour convinced her to turn and go without further incident.

Some iteration of this was repeated another half a dozen times on the way through the Commons. It was strange for Gorim how easy it was to fall back into this role. It was stranger still how everyone ultimately seemed to accept it, when neither he or Lady Aeducan possessed any real authority to back up their arrogance. Gorim had never thought himself a showman, but maybe that’s all he’d ever been. Playing on status that had been illusory and paper thin.

Or maybe this was who he was. Once a manservant, always a manservant.

Gorim hoped the worst of it had passed when they finally climbed up the steps to the Diamond Quarter, but there was no such luck. Nobody else in Orzammar had hair that red and stunk so strongly of ale and rotten fish.

Oghren was thankfully indisposed.

“Just get over to Tapsters and drown yourself already,” Lolinar was telling him. “You know as well as I do that’s how this always ends.”

Oghren turned for the stairs. And Gorim could not quite bring himself to pity the man for the despair that shown clear on his face.

He felt vindicated when Oghren’s face contorted into a curse. “Gorim and the Princess, heh,” he grumbled, as he shoved past. “Bunch of nuglickers, just like all the others.”

Lolinar shook his head, and waved an arm up in greeting. “Gorim Saelac, you old man! There’s a sight for sore eyes! Can you believe it? Oghren’s barely even Warrior Caste anymore and he still clomps around here like he owns the place.”

Gorim smiled in spite of himself. “It’s never stopped him before.”

Lolinar snorted. “You’d know better than anyone.”

Lady Aeducan frowned. “Who is this man, Gorim?”

“This is Lolinar Ivo,” Gorim introduced.

Lolinar gave a stiff nod of his head. “Lady Ae- Your- um, Grey Warden,” he finished lamely.

“Ivo, is it?” Lady Aeducan asked. “You’ll have to pass on my greetings to your cousin Frandlin!” she said insincerely.

“That will be very difficult,” Lolinar said, “given he died two months back.”

“Oh.” That expression was back on Lady Aeducan’s face. Like something had gone wrong in an inexplicably confusing way. “My apologises,” she offered stiffly.

“We weren’t that close.” Lolinar shrugged. “Can’t say if it was the political intrigue, or if an Archdemon swallowed him and spat him back out. Vartag Gavorn’s taken over his spot as Bhelen’s second, though.”

“All the same,” Lady Aeducan said lightly, before offering farewells.

The elf snickered once they were far enough away.

“My, that was…” Wynne began.

“Not a word,” Lady Aeducan warned. She turned to Gorim. “And what can you tell me about this Oghren?”

“It’s been a long time since he’s been worth knowing,” Gorim shrugged. “He won honours in the Deep Roads, back when you were still learning how to swing a sword. He’s Warrior Caste, a former member of House Kondrat, and husband of Paragon Branka. Now he’s mostly known for getting drunk and showing up at the Palace to shout slander at anyone who’ll listen.”

“That’s odd,” Lady Aeducan said. “I don’t think I’ve ever run into him before.”

Gorim smiled. “Then I did my job well, my lady.”

==

“Well, that was an average Assembly meeting,” Lady Aeducan announced. “More or less.”

“Maker…” Alistair breathed, nearly dropping the pile of treaties he had clutched in his arms. “And those are the people I’ll have to negotiate with someday. Why would anyone want to be a king?”

“Just a little taste of what you can expect later,” Lady Aeducan told him smugly. “Didn’t want to give you an incomplete tour your first time in Orzammar.”

“Andraste’s grace!” Wynne offered in a scandalised voice. “They have a responsibility to their people, and yet they’re seconds away from starting a fistfight! How do they get anything done?!”

“They don’t.” Lady Aeducan shrugged.

The elf cackled. “If you think this is bad, you would hate to see a trade manifest hammered out in Antiva.” He seemed to ponder something for a long moment, and spun a dagger in his hand. “Though, I admit, in Antiva the whole process is expedited for the regular removal of… excess fat.”

“Speaking of which-” Lady Aeducan raised her arm and waved down a figure across the hall. “Vortag Gavorn! Still trying to make that half-a-beard work?”

Vortag turned to them with narrowed eyes. But he was alone in the Assembly and, even if he might have spit at the feet of just Lady Aeducan and her second, he appeared to think better of picking a fight against five.

“I heard you had returned, exile. What insult-?!”

He was cut off when Lady Aeducan swung a familiar arm around his back. He seemed so startled, Gorim was not even sure he’d realised when she unhooked the shield off his back.

“You see, I never got to congratulate my little brother on his rise up the ranks,” she lamented. “I think you can help arrange an audience on my behalf.”

Vortag pushed her away, with the lazy two-handed shrug of someone pushing away an overexcited nug that had gone too far with the roughhousing. “It is difficult to believe that,” he scowled. “After you left, many cruel accusations fell on Bhelen. He could only assume they came from you.”

“You… assumed they were from me?” Lady Aeducan said. “From someone who has, for months, been nowhere near enough to Orzammar to even consider spreading rumours? I hate to break it to you, my dear Vortag, but I was a little busy being exiled.”

Vortag crossed his arms and scowled harder. He was playing the game poorly, and they all knew it. “What reason would Bhelen have to trust you with an audience?”

Lady Aeducan fixed him with a pitying look, like he might be stupid. “One has to respect Bhelen’s triumphs. He played his hand against me well. And anyhow,” she dismissed with a practised wave, “being a Warden gives you a little… perspective,” she offered with a flourish. “I need warriors to combat the Blight, and for that I’ll need Bhelen’s cooperation far more than his enmity.”

It really spoke to how much Bhelen needed their cooperation, or at least couldn’t afford to fight another enemy in this city, when Vartag complied. He pulled a collection of forgeries from under his sleeve, and a demand that Lady Aeducan prove her loyalties out of his ass.

It surprised Gorim that Lady Aeducan was so courteous with him at this point, allowing him to give her the run around and refraining from prying into the details of Harrowmont’s supposed treachery.

She was far less courteous when Dulin Forender approached her outside the assembly.

“I have nothing to say to the usurper!” She placed her arm against his shoulder and shoved, so he nearly tripped and nearly tumbled down the set of stairs leading up to the Assembly room.

It was difficult to say whether Gorim was less impressed with how Dulin turned and ran, or by Lady Aeducan’s sadistic cackle. And he did not seem to be the only one, judging by the looks on Alistair’s and Wynne’s faces. Only the elf seemed amused by Lady Aeducan’s dramatics, smiling wryly at her backside.

Gorim had a mind to speak against it, but neither the place nor the station. Not until Lady Aeducan turned to him. “Well, now that all our boring responsibilities are settled, what should we show our guests next?”

==

The Provings didn’t turn out to be as fun a tourist activity for their surfacer guests when Lady Aeducan signed them up to participate. Gorim had held his own well enough against Olaniv, but Piotin Aeducan’s team was a well oiled machine. And Gorim had been glad to sit on the sidelines and watch Lady Aeducan’s team mount a similar assault. “For the Grey Wardens!” as Alistair announced.

Gorim was not sure if it was practised showmanship, or just dumb luck that had Piotin knocked to the ground at a critical moment. With the hereldry on Lady Aeducan’s shield facing down at him.

They decided to host the victory party in Piotin’s quarters.

“It’s quite dreadful and crowded in here, isn’t it?” Lady Aeducan asked, with all five of them crammed inside.

Piotin grunted from the corner. He was holding a chilled runestone to his head.

“Those aren’t your dirty socks are they?” Lady Aeducan asked. “And that couch – ! Are you living in your dressing room at the Provings?!” she said aghast.

Piotin grunted again.

“Auntie would just be ashamed of you,” Lady Aeducan scolded.

“I don’t understand,” the elf said. “Is he simple? Did you hit him harder than you thought? He has not said one word since the match.”

“I’m not simple,” Piotin said. “Just shut it.”

The elf shrugged and helped himself to the gift basket, full of fruits and jerked meat, set at the table in the centre of the room. Wynne and Lady Aeducan followed. Alistair and Gorim were left standing against the wall with stony expressions.

“I have to say, ever since I returned to Orzammar, a great many people have been exceptionally rude,” Lady Aeducan said. “Not Piotin though. He was always like that.”

Piotin grunted.

“Prince Trian didn’t call him the thorn of his army for nothing,” Lady Aeducan continued.

“Horns,” Piotin corrected.

“The thorn in his horns,” Lady Aeducan agreed.

“You should not talk about the Crown Prince that way,” Piotin mumbled darkly.

“And you shouldn’t be championing his killer,” Lady Aeducan said.

“I’m not championing you.”

“I don’t need you to,” Lady Aeducan said.

Piotin sighed. “You gave a good showing at the Provings, exile. But you should not have come.”

“Some would say my victory in the Provings means I have the blessing of the Ancestors.”

“You fought on behalf of the Grey Wardens,” Piotin said. “The Ancestors’ victory was for them.”

“That’s how it is?” Lady Aeducan asked.

“That’s how it is,” Piotin agreed.

“I somehow doubt this is going anywhere good,” Wynne interjected. “Perhaps we should take our leave.”

Lady Aeducan sighed, but aquiesqued. “I suppose you’re right. Have to go meet up with Lord Dace in the Aeducan Thaig.” She smiled at Piotin. “You see, some of us aren’t afraid of treading that ground and scaring up Trian’s memory.”

==

The truth was Lady Aeducan didn’t linger over the spot either. They came to the crossroads, and she turned her head away, down the next tunnel.

Gorim did not believe Lady Aeducan should feel guilty, when she had acted in self defence. “He tried to kill you,” Gorim reminded.

“Yes, he did,” Lady Aeducan agreed. “Why do you think I have trouble looking at that?”

==

Lady Aeducan had set her sword by the door to the King’s Chamber, and her shield against the armchair she was currently splayed out in. She ran a hand over the shield’s curving edge. Gorim stood behind her and did not take leave to speak.

When Bhelen had finished pouring her a glass of spirits, she upended it into a vase.

“We’ll see if that vase is alive in a few month’s time,” she said softly.

Bhelen rolled his eyes.

“Did you poison father?” Lady Aeducan asked, with a curious tilt of her head.

“Father died of grief,” Bhelen said, very crisply. “He couldn’t bear to live when you were gone.”

Lady Aeducan hummed appreciatively.

“He sent me the shield,” she bragged, with a knowing twist of her lips. “He didn’t leave it for you.”

Bhelen rolled his eyes again. With the rumours running around Orzammar, it was usually easy to forget he was only a couple years into his majority. But there was nothing like a taunting older sister to make one feel like a child again.

“You know that shield isn’t really an ancient artefact?” Bhelen asked. “I had it made, artificially aged, and planted. I arranged the whole expedition from the top down.”

Lady Aeducan frowned, looking down at the shield with a slight scrunch in her nose. And then she relaxed and continued to run her fingers along its edge.

“Well, Father believed it was real when he sent it to me.” She shrugged. “Isn’t that right, Gorim?”

“That is correct, my lady,” he agreed.

“And when the people of Orzammar see it, they believe it genuine?”

“That is correct, my lady.”

“And I’m sure it would be a lot more trouble for you to come out with the truth and publicise otherwise, wouldn’t it, my dear brother?”

Bhelen grumbled moodily.

“Oh, don’t be such a child,” Lady Aeducan scolded. “You won,” she said, with the tremor of something raw in her voice. “You played the game well, and you _won_. If I was in your shoes, I would have done the same in a heartbeat. And, if you were in my shoes, you would definitely be taunting me in this exact same way.”

“I guess you’ve finally learned something about politics,” Bhelen said. “But why are you here?”

“I have a Blight to stop,” Lady Aeducan said very seriously. “And you’re my best chance of making that happen.”

“At least you recognise that,” Bhelen said with a gleam in his eye. “This is a time for action, not cultured debate. We need absolute unity to fight against the fulcrum of true evil.” He scoffed. “Harrowmont would bow and bounce you on his knee like a child, but he could never overcome the Assembly’s resistance to your treaty.”

“Sounds like somebody’s jealous they aren’t the one bouncing off on Harrowmont’s knee,” Lady Aeducan said.

Gorim was pretty sure you could have heard a pin drop in that room.

“Excuse me?” Bhelen said hoarsely.

“Oh, you don’t have to pretend! We all knew about your little crush, didn’t we? Didn’t we, Gorim?”

“A-As you say, my lady,” Gorim coughed.

Bhelen was turning a few more shades red.

“Always so jealous,” Lady Aeducan scolded. “But I suppose bound to end tragically – what with you fighting to the death over the throne… Perhaps not as tragically as it’s ended for poor Tercy. I’m pretty sure she hasn’t bounced in his lap in a good long while now either.”

It was at this point that somebody walked through the door.

A very pretty someone with braided red hair, delicate features, a casteless brand, and a full breast.

“M-My Lord, I was just wondering- Oh!” The woman startled. “I apologise. I didn’t realise you had guests.”

“You shouldn’t be in here,” Bhelen said, paling.

The woman bowed and was turning to leave when Lady Aeducan spoke up.

“Oh, it’s Amber Rose, isn’t it?!” she gushed. “Gorim, tell Amber Rose to come in.”

“You, uh, heard the lady,” Gorim said.

Rica Brosca shuffled awkwardly on her feet. “Um, it’s good to see you again, my lady. But, ah… If I may ask, why are you calling me that?”

“Gorim, why is the casteless speaking to me?”

“Where did you hear that nickname?” Bhelen demanded, before Gorim was forced to figure out how to respond.

“Oh, I’ve heard them _all,_ ” Lady Aeducan was saying. “Amber Rose. My Dearest Prince. Smoochums. Bhelen just left the letters lying about the Palace for anyone to read.”

Nobody said anything for a moment.

“Oh, are we not going to talk about this?” Lady Aeducan asked. “You’re all being very boring.”

“I demand you speak to the mother of my child, the Crown Prince, with more respect,” Bhelen said.

“You want me to treat Amber Rose with respect?” Lady Aeducan laughed. “I suppose it suits you, Bhelen, to have gone looking for love so far below your station. A fellow noble might not be so easily impressed, might even be able to tell you ‘no’ once in a while, without fear of getting tossed back on the streets. But you can’t have that.”

Rica Brosca fiddled with her sleeve, and utterly failed to say anything.

“Do you really want to play that game, elder sister?” Bhelen asked. “I could say the same about your taste in romance.” He did not look at Gorim, but tilted his head meaningfully.

Lady Aeducan frowned.

“I really should show myself out,” Rica Brosca winced and pointed to the door.

“You should,” Bhelen agreed. “My Amber Rose.”

Rica Brosca blushed, and bowed slightly to each of them, Gorim included, before sweeping from the room. She was utterly lacking in the kind of self-importance a King’s consort should have, and yet she had managed to shame them anyhow.

Lady Aeducan had certainly never entertained giving a pet name to him.

“Have you fun, sister,” Bhelen said, reaching to pour himself a glass from the same bottle of spirits he’d offered Lady Aeducan. “But kill Jarvia. Kill her, and you’ll have your army, and we’ll work the rest of it out.”

==

They were given free rein of the Palace. Lady Aeducan took a heretical moment to sit atop the throne. To look through Trian’s diary. To confuse everyone she ran across. It seemed they couldn’t decide if she was a traitor to House Aeducan or the saviour of Bhelen’s cause.

But there were some places you could not befoul with affected irreverence.

“This is my room!” Lady Aeducan protested.

“Please,” Herbalist Widron said. “The Lady Brodens is horribly ill.”

She was. She was withering away to nothing, on top of sheets stained with vomit and sweat. In the bed where Gorim had once had the luck to canoodle with a Princess.

“This is my room,” Lady Aeducan repeated dumbly. Even though there was nothing left of it that anyone could want.

“Please,” Widron repeated, having the sense not to argue with her.

Lady Aeducan retreated, as if she’d been slapped. But she grabbed the edge of a shelf. It had been emptied of portraits and books and honours, and filled with potions and tonics. And she pulled and toppled it behind her before she left.

==

It was going to take a pretty sizeable crew of Bhelen’s men to clear out Jarvia’s Hideout in its entirety. It was a deep and dark web of tunnels circling under the city. With carved out hovels and old doors and empty passages that, once more, told a story of an Orzammar that used to be larger, and was now shrinking. Abandoned at the edges.

Lady Aeducan moved through the tunnels with seeming purpose, cataloguing in broad strokes the contraband that had been stored here and what would be repossessed by the crown. But when the others were turned away, she grabbed Gorim by the hand and dragged him around a corner. Around another. Giggling like a child.

“My lady…” he asked.

“Shh!” she shushed him. “Look!”

The cave glowed an eerie turquoise. Lady Aeducan pointed to the tezpadam chittering in an artificial nest. There were a pair of brontos scratching their hides against the walls of the cavern. All were docile, clearly having been domesticated in service of the Carta.

They walked through the tunnels together, hand in hand, until they reached a dead end – no way forward but down off a cliff and into the pit, darker and darker as it burrowed to the centre of the world and out of sight.

Lady Aeducan pulled him away from the edge with a sudden jolt of her hand. She backed up to the cavern wall, dragging him with her, until she was nearly collapsed against stone. Her torso was pulled away, with how she was slouched, but they were close enough that their knees knocked against each other – clanging with the sound of armour.

Lady Aeducan bit her lip, and it brought to memory all the other times they’d run into some corner or cavern or other secret place to have a moment of one another.

“Lady Aeducan…” Gorim began.

“Don’t call me that,” she said. “Not right now.”

Gorim sighed. “I’m married.”

“And you’ll be going back to your wife soon enough,” Lady Aeducan said primly. “We don’t have much time left, so don’t waste it calling me the wrong things at the wrong times.”

She was right, in her own way. Their world had always been crushing in against them at all sides. There was a mountain above Orzammar, and the Stone below them, and walls and expectations and enemies from all angles. Every empty space, where it could be just the two of them, wasn’t something to waste.

“You’re not really going to go through with helping your brother, are you?” Gorim asked. Because he wasn’t sure he’d get another chance to ask. Not on the streets of Orzammar, or in the chambers of the Assembly. The Shaperate. The Royal Palace. Bhelen had given them beds and they slept with one eye open.

“I don’t want to talk about that,” Lady Aeducan said.

“Lord Harrowmont spoke on your behalf to the Assembly,” Gorim said. “He arranged my meeting with you before your exile. He believed you. He was fond of you. He would have your interests in mind, here in Orzammar.”

“Harrowmont sentenced me to die,” Lady Aeducan snarled. “He knew I acted in self defence when I slew Trian. He knew Bhelen had planned this. And he looked me in the eye and sentenced me to walk the Deep Roads anyhow. Locked the gates behind me.” She swallowed hard. “That should tell you all you need to know of Harrowmont – what his fondness and favour are worth.”

Gorim supposed she could level the same criticism at King Endrin. He supposed she could level the same criticism at Gorim himself.

She had thought she’d been worth more to them.

Gorim sighed. “My lady…”

“I don’t want to talk about this.” She pulled on his arm, a few impatient tugs.

She deserved more than he could give her but, in lieu of that, he could do this for her at least.

So Gorim gave in. He brushed the hair away from her brow and leaned in to kiss her. Once. Twice. As many times as they could before someone came to find them in this immeasurably small corner of the world.

==

She removed her gauntlet. There had been illicit mining going on here, and buckets were filled with slurry – low grade liquid lyrium. She dipped her fingers in it, and smeared the blue over her face like war paint.

“You shouldn’t do that,” he told her. “You’ll go mad that way. Dwarves aren’t that resistant to its effects.”

She met his eyes, as she dipped her fingers again and smeared just under her eye. Reached for his arm and traced spiralling iridescent circles over the brush of red down.

==

Perhaps Gorim wouldn’t have been so eager to share that lonely moment with Lady Aeducan if he’d known what was coming next.

“What do you know of the Paragon Branka?” Bhelen asked.

“My lady-”

“Quiet, Gorim.” Lady Aeducan waved him off impatiently, before answering Bhelen’s question.

He tried interrupting again, when the conversation had gone exactly where he thought it would.

“You do not have leave to speak, Gorim,” Lady Aeducan reminded, more sharply this time.

Bhelen had generally treated him as his station warranted. Which was to say he typically acted as if Gorim were not there, except as maybe an extension of his sister’s being, like an extra limb or spare shield. But Bhelen chose this moment to fix Gorim with a curious eye and smug curl of his lips.

Lady Aeducan begged off for several hours and reappeared to give Alistair a long list of instructions for petitioning the Assembly and Shaperate in her absence, handing notes to those of their number camped out in the Frostbacks, and dealing with a man named Arl Eamon. She did not leave instructions about what to do with Gorim, because she’d be seeing to that matter herself.

She traded for supplies, and arranged a bronto for the caravan, and the whole while she refused to hear him.

“Not now,” she hissed at Gorim between gritted teeth. “We are in public. We cannot afford disagreement.”

It wasn’t until they were trudging up the empty stretch between Orzammar’s market streets and the entrance to the Deep Roads that Lady Aeducan decided the location secluded enough for dispute.

“Lady Aeducan, forgive me, but what are you thinking?!”

“I’m thinking that we’re going to find a Paragon,” she responded airily.

“By launching into a Deep Roads Expedition after a woman who’s two years gone?!” Gorim demanded.

Lady Aeducan scowled at him. “Do you really intend to question me like that?”

“How does this make sense?” he asked. “What happens when you don’t find her?”

“Then we char a body and fabricate some evidence and figure out a story to feed people,” she said in a quiet hiss.

“What’s to say the assembly won’t decide the next king in your absence?” Gorim said. “What will you do if Harrowmont throws you to the surface with nothing for your Blight? What will you do if Bhelen turns on you again?”

Lady Aeducan was, above all, very charming. And she could have come up with some appeasing words. She could have talked Gorim in circles and convinced him, through some bizarre obscurance of fact, that this plan made sense.

But Gorim was not worth those things.

“I don’t know,” she said. But with so much confidence and finality that Gorim was at a loss for what to argue with.

“This will add a month to our time here, easily,” Gorim said. “At the very least.”

Lady Aeducan scowled. “Yes, because that’s what this is about,” she accused. “Why should I explain the game to you, when all you care about is how badly it’s to inconvenience you?”

“I apologise if I’m not looking forward to trekking around the Deep Roads for a month or three until you need me to be a prop in your costume for when you strut about the Diamond Quarter, pretending you never left.”

“ _I will always be your man, my Lady Aeducan_ ,” she mocked, throwing his old words back at him. “You were a pretender long before I was, Gorim. You pretend at honour and loyalty. But you flaked on me, and you flaked on your wife and, you say you’re happy with your lot, but I bet you’d throw it away in an instant if the Assembly offered to restore your station.”

Gorim sighed. “My lady, I never meant to hurt you.” But he had. He knew he had. He owed her more.

“Then shut it,” Lady Aeducan snapped. “We have an expedition to see to.”

Anything further was interrupted by the sound of clanging armour, as someone jogged up beside them and stopped.

“There you are,” Oghren said, bracing against his knees and heaving a sigh that smelled like rancid nug. “I almost thought you two had left without me.”

“‘Without you’?” Lady Aeducan questioned.

And it really was the icing on the cake that, given the choice between the two warriors, Oghren was the one Lady Aeducan was willing to listen to.

==

Gorim marked notches against the wooden edge of the caravan, trying to keep track of the days by how many meals they’d had.

In Orzammar, the Shaperate measured time and days. They had torches and runes dimmed during the sleeping hours. But there was none of that here in the Deep Roads. The ever-burning torches pulsed strong, no matter events that passed or how exhausted its people became.

They stopped irregularly, when the darkspawn seemed distant and their party was too tired to move on. It was best to sleep during these times, but Gorim found sleep illusive and fleeting. The caravan was positioned to block the entrance to the cavern, and on this side of it they were about as safe as they could be in Ortan Thaig, with the stone lit blue and covered in nests of gossamer white web. Nests for spiders long deceased.

Gorim laid against his bedroll. He counted his tally of meals, and hoped it wasn’t a tally of days. He measured how many more meals could be rationed from what was left in the caravan. And how many meals could be cut from the bronto, once it would eat more than there was left to carry. How long would it be, before they neared the point of no return? If it came to it, would they have to fight Oghren for the right to turn back to Orzammar without Branka? Would Oghren leave the Deep Roads without his wife, after so many years dreaming of being out on expedition to find her?

 _Oghren_ , Gorim thought bitterly, _was more devoted than he was._

“She’s going to have the baby without me,” Gorim said. “I’m going to miss it.”

Lady Aeducan leaned against the side of the caravan and sighed. “You’re not going to miss it.”

“I’m not going to be there when my child is born.” And though Gorim knew the Deep Roads had addled his mind, he could not stop himself from sobbing quietly into his bedroll.

“Stop it,” she told him. “That’s not true.”

But she was soft during these times. She let him cry with minimal complaints, and held him against her stomach.

“I’m going to miss it,” he whispered.

“You’re not.”

“What if I die here?”

“You won’t.”

“It’s the blighted Deep Roads. We’re a party of five. The darkspawn will rip us to shreds. If I don’t get strung up by a spider, fall off a cliff, or get lost and waste away from hunger.” He hiccuped. “I’m going to die here, and never even get to see them.”

“You’re not,” Lady Aeducan said, running a hand through his hair, his beard.

She listened a while longer, reassuring in the same sleepless voice. And then she sighed and wiggled off her trousers.

“Here,” she said. She released him from her arms, and wrapped him in her legs instead. “Your mouth has better uses than complaining.”

She bent her knees so they were curled around his neck, and pressed the heel of her foot against his shoulder.

“The others will see,” he protested hoarsely.

“Always concerned about appearances,” Lady Aeducan said. _Even in the middle of a breakdown._ “Wynne is on watch. And I honestly don’t give a fuck what Oghren sees. He’ll have forgotten it to the drink by the next day anyhow.”

And the assassin was a shadow. Always watching and never there.

It was second nature in a way. Gorim shook his head, to wipe his tears against her thighs, and nuzzled her with his nose, his tongue, scratched her lightly with his beard. It was mechanical and methodical, and she was warm. He didn’t have to think – just listen to the small hitches in her breath.

“You’re mad at me, aren’t you? For bringing you here?” She asked. “I don’t mind if you want to take it out on me. You can be rough with me.”

It was easy for her to say. He didn’t know how to be rough with her. No matter how angry he got, he only knew how to love her like this – with the kind of soft adoration that befitted a servant.

She whined and moaned under him for something more, but he couldn’t find it, had nothing to deliver. And eventually she was the one angry and upset and rough. She dug her heels painfully into his back, and ground herself up against his face.

And then she sighed, from frustration or contentment – Gorim couldn’t tell. She sat up straight, and with the kind of strength he’d come to expect of her, flipped him onto his back.

“I bet she doesn’t do this for you,” Lady Aeducan said, as she tugged his pants down, stuck a hand between his legs, and edged a couple of fingers inside him. “I know what you like. I bet she doesn’t fuck you like this. Press into you until you’re halfway down her forearm, and pound into you until you’re ready to scream.”

And the saddest thing was that Melanie probably would. If he asked her, she’d probably do all of that for him and more. But he couldn’t disillusion Lady Aeducan any more than he already had. He bit his cheek around the groan that slipped out of him, as she sunk deeper inside him, and didn’t answer.

“Say my name. Say my name,” Lady Aeducan commanded, as he pressed down against her and reached up for her.

“Sereda,” he moaned. _Sereda._

==

They found Branka and the Anvil. Because, in the end, there was nothing Lady Sereda Aeducan couldn’t do.

Wynne and the elf appeared to have very different opinions about what should be done with it.

Oghren just wanted his wife back. He couldn’t come to terms with the fact that Branka was changed.

(Gorim did not like that the poor, lecherous drunk was the most relatable person in the room.)

Lady Aeducan listened to all the voices of the people in the room, and then turned to him.

“Gorim, what do you think? We destroy a piece of the Dwarven Empire’s history and power? Or we let them throw people to the Anvil until they have no city left to rule? Which do you think will upset those fools in the Assembly more?”

The entirety of the Deep Roads seemed to have silenced itself for him.

Gorim hesitated. “Permission to speak freely?”

Lady Aeducan arched an eyebrow. “I asked, didn’t I?”

With that permission given, Gorim opened his mouth and lied.

==

“Has the assembly voted to honour whatever King the Paragon chose?” Lady Aeducan asked the Steward Bandelor.

He assured her that they had.

“Good,” she said. “Announce me, then.”

She walked into the Assembly Hall, head held high. Oghren did the honours of explaining what had transpired in the Deep Roads. Gorim rephrased for him less stylistically.

“I would like to believe Oghren’s word,” Harrowmont said, “but it is well known that the Grey Warden has thrown in with her brother. And better known that Saelac’s loyalty to her invalidates his testimony.”

“Enough,” Bandelor called. “Tell us, Grey Warden, which king did the Paragon endorse?”

“After careful consideration, the Paragon-” There was a pause for dramatic effect. “-came out in favour of Lord Harrowmont!” Lady Aeducan announced, with an almost regretful tinge of her voice.

“What?!” Bhelen shouted.

“It is as she says,” Gorim agreed.

“You traitor!” Bhelen called, leaning over the rail on the dias. “I will not abide by this!”

“I don’t know what you want me to say?” Lady Aeducan shrugged listlessly. “Do you want me to _lie_ about what the Paragon said?”

“You turned your back on Orzammar when you killed our brother!”

In the meantime, Bandelor was attempting to pass the crown to Harrowmont. As soon as it was on his head, Lady Aeducan snorted dirisively.

“Face it, Bhelen. This is how the game is played. And you lost. Really, you should have been a lot smarter than that.” But her words were being drowned out by shouts and jeers and the sound of clinking metal.

“Watch out! They have weapons!” someone called.

Sereda whispered murderously. “So do we.” Gorim would be surprised if anyone else heard it.

Gorim lost his sense of himself while fighting, perhaps the way berserkers did. Multiple deshyrs had crowded him, swinging maces at his head. Ranged combat was not an option. And whatever was happening, he suspected it was Wynne’s good graces that had got him through it. He rammed his sword through two different deshyrs. He was a Warrior, and these were members of the Noble Caste. People he was never meant to fight.

He lost his sense of where Sereda was too, until it was all over. When he found her she was standing over Bhelen, who was collapsed dead on the floor in a pile of blood.

She wore the same expression she had when it had been Trian, Gorim, the music box. Like she wasn’t quite sure how he’d gotten there. Like she wasn’t quite sure why she was the one standing.

==

King Harrowmont thanked her for the crown half-heartedly.

“You seemed very intent on supporting Bhelen for a good, long while,” Harrowmont said nervously.

“He thought so as well,” Lady Aeducan agreed. “It was how I managed to blindside him. I doubt he would have even spoken with me if I hadn’t done such a good job keeping up appearances.”

“Do not think me ungrateful,” Harrowmont said. “I still have a fondness for you, as King Endrin’s child, but you have left me to rule an Orzammar divided.”

“That sounds like something you better see to then. The way I’d better see to the Blight.”

Some arrangements were made for how to deal with this threat. But Harrowmont seemed unwilling to let some things go.

“Of the eighty deshyrs that made up the assembly, only twelve remain,” he said, worriedly.

“Consider it this way, I’ve routed out those who could be manipulated or bought.”

Harrowmont seemed unsure.

“You could just move to dissolve the Assembly.” Lady Aeducan shrugged. “It was almost certainly what Bhelen planned to do.”

Harrowmont looked as if he might have a seizure.

“Even among the deshyrs who remain, the heads of Houses Dace and Helmi still seem upset with me for some reason,” he said, once he’d calmed himself. “You wouldn’t happen to know about that?”

“Not a thing,” Lady Aeducan dead-panned.

“And what of House Aeducan?” Harrowmont asked. “It has no more heir.”

“Didn’t Bhelen’s whore have a babe?” Lady Aeducan asked curiously. “Believe Amber Rose was her name… There’s your heir.”

“She is casteless,” Harrowmont said stupidly.

“The boy isn’t.”

“He’s an infant,” Harrowmont said. “An infant with no living parent that can teach him the ways of the noble houses.”

Lady Aeducan was unmoved. “I guess you better find someone to start teaching him.”

For a moment neither of them said anything.

“I’d better head back topside,” Lady Aeducan finally confessed.

“Perhaps you should,” Harrowmont agreed curtly. “I’ll go see to putting things in motion for the Blight on my end.”

“Right,” Lady Aeducan agreed.

She had a more sympathetic conversation with Kardol on the other side of the Assembly Door. He seemed interested in sending the Legion to help fight on the surface. Lady Aeducan seemed interested in stopping the Blight. When they bid each other farewell, they clasped arms, like comrades.

Afterwards she slumped against her elf.

“I’m tired, Zevran. Carry me.”

Zevran chuckled. “I am pretty sure I can not carry you, your terrible, heavy and entirely too difficult to remove set of armour, and both of our packs.”

Oghren grunted disdainfully, and Wynne was fixing them with a judgemental stare, but Gorim reached out a hand.

“I can carry the packs, my lady.”

Zevran seemed to struggle under the weight anyhow, but made a valiant stumbling effort across the Diamond Quarter. Looking over the railing to the lava flows and the rest of the city below.

“Ah, the last big city of the dwarves,” he said. “Just think: In another century or so, the only dwarves might be those on the surface.”

“Well, you certainly won’t catch Good Ol' Oghren down here, when this place collapses.”

Lady Aeducan hummed in agreement. And even Wynne seemed to take in the solemness of this. In a way they were all saying goodbye.

“I hate this place,” Lady Aeducan finally announced, to the lot of them. “I hate who I become when I’m here.”

Zevran chuckled. “I know, _amore mio_.”

“The politics were certainly as cut-throat as they say,” Wynne allowed.

“You really have to see it first hand,” Gorim said. “Everyone on the surface talks about dwarven politics. But I still don’t think the rumours do it justice.”

“Oh, I can’t wait to introduce you all to the workings of Antiva,” Zevran announced.

Lady Aeducan turned to look down at Gorim, from where she was perched on Zevran’s back, with her arms wrapped about Zevran’s neck.

“Let’s hurry. We need to get you back to your wife.”

“Melanie might have had the baby already, for all I know,” Gorim sulked. Premature births were not unheard of, especially among dwarves.

“Have a bit of faith, Gorim,” Lady Aeducan commanded. “Even if you’re late, you have the rest of your life to make it up to her.”

It would have been a good note for things to end on, if they hadn’t been ambushed on the stairs down to the Commons. There was Vartag Gavorn and Piotin Aeducan, swords at the ready.

“You will not live to brag about your betrayal,” Vartag yelled, as Gorim swore and pulled his crossbow off his shoulder.

Lady Aeducan sighed, as she slid off Zevran’s back. “I would never brag about it,” she said, reaching for her weapon. “May the Stone accept you when you fall.”


End file.
